‘Station Eleven’ made major changes from the book. The series creator explains why

The first minutes of “Station Eleven” take place during a stage play. To help the audience be present for his journey right along with him, it made a lot more sense that his dream of becoming a healer began in a moment that we get to watch ourselves, not something that happened weeks ago that we have to tell you about in some expository scene later.” On-screen and on the page, “Station Eleven” sprawls across numerous timelines before, during and after a devastating pandemic that nearly wipes out humanity. It remained a hot buy as COVID-19 spread throughout the world, even as its author, Emily St. John Mandel, told The Times in March 2020: “I would not recommend reading ‘Station Eleven’ in the middle of a pandemic.” Tweaks are inevitable in any spine-to-screen adaptation, and this 10-episode series “departs significantly in details, events, characters and characterizations,” writes Times critic Robert Lloyd, who has also deemed it one of the best shows of the year. For example, much of the action takes place in Chicago, where Somerville lived for nine years, rather than Mandel’s native Toronto, because “the architecture of that town speaks to the specificity of the places in Episode 1.” Readers may be taken aback by the series’ pairing of Jeevan with Kirsten, a child actor in the aforementioned play who is unable to reunite with her parents, for numerous foundational scenes. “We also needed the show to be funny sometimes — not to be glib about tragedies but more to get the tone we needed to make people feel safe — and it’s an absolutely comic setup to have two people who don’t know each other well, or have different ideas about what’s right and wrong, have to work together to get somewhere.” Miranda has a new backstory for the screen.